Wednesday, 9 October 2013

It's not all bad: how to feel better about Britain

Just some of our amazing fellow citizens

How
often do you watch or read the news and feel that it’s only ever bad, and that
it leaves you wondering whether you’ve strayed into the Slough of Despond?

And
even if you don’t fall into a trap of assuming that the unrelenting drip, drip
of crime and corruption and scandal is a mirror of society as a whole, it can
still give you a sense of being rather depressed by it all.

Last
night’s Pride of Britain awards were, for precisely those reasons, a very good
antidote.

Yes,
there was a red carpet and yes, there were plenty of celebrities to hand out
the awards, but the winners themselves were, for the most part, hardly
household names.

Yet
each had a story of courage or dedication that had seen them take the stage to
receive an award.

There
was Margaret Aspinall, the mother of one of the Hillsborough dead, who has
never given up campaigning for justice for the 96.

Karin
Williams, a lollipop lady from Wales, threw herself in front of an out-of-control
car to save a group of children – and remains, for the present, in a
wheelchair.

Every
Saturday night, 86-year-old Anne Scarfe goes out with a team of volunteers in
Plymouth to help young people get home safely after an evening on the tiles.

The
members of the RNLI flood rescue team in Devon were honoured for their bravery.

Twins
Trevor and Ray Powles, now in their 70s, suffered TB as young men, but then
dedicated their lives to becoming doctors, and have made enormous steps forward
in the understanding and treatment of breast cancer and leukaemia respectively.

After
nine years without a job, Clifford Harding felt that his life was going
nowhere, but he developed a way of helping children to learn their times table
by using rap.

June
Kelly founded and runs a football team in Cheetham Hill, one of the most
deprived areas of the country, where she’s helped to keep youngsters off the
streets and out of trouble – her team has even been lauded for the politeness
of the players.

Sharon
Grey was named teacher of the year for turning around a school near Nottingham
that was threatened with closure, while 12-year-old Balie Kershaw won for
giving CPR as he waited for an ambulance to arrive after his father had
suffered a massive heart attack.

An
award also went to Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani teenager that the Taliban
tried to murder because she was campaigning for education for girls. As the
possibility has been raised that she might win the Nobel Peace Prize, the
Taliban has said that it is committed to trying to kill her again and will be
“proud” if it can do so.

And
so the stories went on.

It
would take a very hardened cynic to have maintained a dry eye throughout – and
I happily admit that even I am not that cynical.

So
many ordinary (what does that even mean?) people doing remarkable, generous
things – or even just overcoming incredible odds. It was a humbling yet
uplifting watch.

Good
news rarely makes the headlines – audiences seem wedded to sensational and
negative stories: or rather, news organisations tend to have decided that that
is the case and that that is what they will provide.

And
it can warp perceptions. For instance, when did you ever read a report about a
social worker who has successfully saved a child from an abusive home?

The
answer is that you won’t have: social workers feature in the news when things
go wrong, and then there’s a culture in a large section of the news media of
vilifying them – often because of a barely-veiled ideological hatred of the
public services/state/PC etc.

It’s
important to say that it’s not always easy for news media to find good-news
stories and give them prominence – I know, having been a duty chief sub editor
on a national paper, and having made the sort of decisions that I’m referring to.

In
those days, I tried to balance out the usual unpleasant or ‘serious’ news at
least a little with, if nothing else, one ‘happy’ picture in an edition. And –
I hope it goes without saying – a fact-based, non-hysterical approach to the
rest of the news, which can also make a difference.

But
unfortunately, the Mail is believed by many of those who read it: its brand of
bile really does inform how many people see this country, even while they
somehow continue to think that it is a respectable, honest and truthful organ.

It
is none of those things.

I
glanced through a copy of the Mail this morning: there was nothing
about the Pride of Britain awards. Well, you didn’t really expect there to be,
did you?

After
all, Paul Dacre and his pack of attack dogs aren’t interested in anything other
than serving the whims of their master, the tax exile Lord Rothermere.

And
if that means drip-feeding the readership an addictive diet of brutalising,
hate-filled paranoia, so be it.

Yet
in the last 10 days, the Mail has gone into an overdrive of nastiness, almost as
though this will convince some that self-regulation of the industry is working
(honest) and should be allowed to continue.

Pride
of Britain was a welcome antidote to all the negativity – not least from a
publication that really does seem to hate the Britain that we live in today.

On
the other hand, if Dacre were to spontaneously combust any time soon –
preferably live on TV, facing questions about why he’s such a nasty,
hate-sprewing piece of work – it would doubtless make one of the jolliest
stories anyone has read for years.

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About Me

London-based journalist, writer, photographer and artist, with one Other Half and three cats.
This blog is about all sorts of things, but mostly reviews. My interests include comics and opera (and even comic opera), cats, tattoos and art.
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